Lamentations 2:20-22

IV. THE PROPHET'S PRAYER FOR HIS PEOPLE Lamentations 2:20-22

TRANSLATION

(20) Behold, O LORD, and consider to whom You have done this! Shall women eat their offspring, babes who are carried in the arms? Shall priest and prophet be slain in the sanctuary of the Lord? (21) On the ground in the streets lie the young and old. My maidens and young men have fallen by the sword. You have slain them in the day of Your anger, slaughtering without mercy. (22) You called, as in the days of a solemn assembly, my terrors round about. On the day of the anger of the LORD there was not one who escaped or survived. Those I carried in the arms and raised up my enemy has consumed.

COMMENTS

In Lamentations 2:20-22 the prophet prays the prayer he has been urging the nation to pray and in so doing teaches them how to properly approach the throne of God. These verses remind one of Jeremiah 14:17-19. The prophet boldly presents all the cogent arguments of which he can think in his effort to influence God to aid the people of Judah. First, he asks God to consider that it is His own people who are suffering (cf. Exodus 32:11-13). Divine judgment has caused the people of Judah to sink into the lowest kind of human behavior, cannibalism. Surely God will intervene when men are driven to the point of consuming one another! Priests and prophets who have been anointed to the service of the Lord are being slain in the sacred precincts of the Temple (Lamentations 2:20). Surely God will intervene when religious massacre is taking place! Young and old, male and female, lie dead on the streets of Jerusalem, slain by the sword of the divinely appointed enemy of Zion (Lamentations 2:21). Surely God will intervene when outrage is committed in public without regard to sex or age. The terrors of warfamine, sword and pestilencehave been summoned by God against Judah just as He might summon His worshipers to a festival. In that day of the Lord's anger no one escaped or survived. The enemy has even consumed the babes in arms! (Lamentations 2:22). So the prayer ends as it began, with a reference to the slaughter of the innocents. This rehearsal of Judah's tale of woe is an implied request for mercy and deliverance. The matter is left in the hands of the Lord in the firm belief that the Judge of all the earth will surely do what is right.